By Chris Stewart, the CEO of the Wayfinder Foundation, a former elected member of Minneapolis’s Board of Education, and a 2014 Bush Fellow.
Over a decade ago, New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and its most powerful union boss, Randi Weingarten, had a showdown over the handling of teachers who weren’t needed by the system, but who were contractually entitled to a job.
The labor-management clash resulted in a deal that allowed larger numbers of unwanted teachers to enter a man-made lake of incompetence bureaucratically labeled the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR). Sending teachers to the ATR is something like sending baseball players to minor league teams without the bats, gloves, balls, grass, plates, fans, coaches, uniforms, bleachers, training camps, or practices.
Read the full oped in The 74.
